Quotes For Entrepreneurs–July 2010

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The good news is that unemployment has fallen to “only” 9.5 percent. The bad news is that the jobless rate is down only because so many people have given up hope of finding work. Perversely, the jobless who aren’t actively looking for jobs are not counted as “unemployed.”

Perhaps there should be a new category titled “mired in existential despair.”

Let me put it in terms that Washington understands: The party that begins to treat the unemployment crisis with the hair-on-fire urgency that it deserves is the party that will do well in November.

“Can the US re-energize the real mainsprings of American power: technological innovation and entrepreneurship?”
Niall Ferguson in “The Future of America’s Economy“

More context:

“Unlike Britain in 1945, which was crushed by debt and slow growth, doomed to imperial decline, I think there is a way out for the United States. I don’t think it’s over. But it all hinges on whether you can re-energize the real mainsprings of American power. And those two things are: innovation, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship. Those are the things that made the United States the greatest economy in the world, and the critical question is: Are we going to get it right? Can we revive those things in such a way that, in the end, we grow our way out of this hole the way the United States grew its way out of the 1970s and, of course, out of the 1930s?”

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“There is no such thing as a self-made man. You will reach your goals only with the help of others.”George Shinn

What I have found—and this is an empirical observation; I see no reason why it should be the case, but it tends to be—is that when we plant a seed, it tends to take five to seven years before it has a meaningful impact on the economics of the company.

It helps to base your strategy on things that won’t change. When I’m talking with people outside the company, there’s a question that comes up very commonly: “What’s going to change in the next five to ten years?” But I very rarely get asked “What’s not going to change in the next five to ten years?” At Amazon we’re always trying to figure that out, because you can really spin up flywheels around those things. All the energy you invest in them today will still be paying you dividends ten years from now.

Whereas if you base your strategy first and foremost on more transitory things—who your competitors are, what kind of technologies are available, and so on—those things are going to change so rapidly that you’re going to have to change your strategy very rapidly, too.

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“If you behave like a disease, people develop an immune system”
Kevin Marks in “How Not To Be Viral“

The business lesson of the camp Sci Fi classic, When Worlds Collide, was this sign at the spaceport where the plucky humans were building the ship that was supposed to rescue humanity before the Earth was destroyed: “Waste anything but time. Time is the one thing we do not have.”